


Kill him in his sleep (1/?)

by MLang



Series: Kill him in his sleep [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 05:33:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18986296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MLang/pseuds/MLang
Summary: In which Hux reflects on his first real meeting with Kylo Ren, is upset about the destruction of a training droid and also doodles Kylo's face on his tablet.Oh yeah, and he gets a late night visitor.





	Kill him in his sleep (1/?)

[ _There were dog people and there were cat people._  
Hux was a cat person. Definitely.  
It wasn’t that he hated dogs… they were just stupid and filthy and…]

Behind his eyes, a mean headache announced itself with a sharp stab.

[ _His initial thought when he first saw Ren without his helmet on had been_ **mutt**.  
Not that Armitage was a purebred himself, but Ren was simply wretched; neglected, and also the ugliest of the litter. An oversized nose that had been broken and not set right before it was allowed to heal. Dark shadows underneath darker eyes. Moles sprinkling his face. And that hair! More like a black mop. He could use a haircut.  
And a shower, Hux had decided, wrinkling his nose. Which was, by the way, perfectly straight.

_And Ren was so young…!_  
Somehow, Hux had expected him to be at least close to his own age. But Ren appeared to be… a mere child in Hux‘s eyes. An angry, bitter youth, unloved by his parents and everyone else.  
Hux didn’t know Ren‘s actual age but in his mind he started to think of him as ‘the brat’. Or ‘the mutt’.  
Or really any other mean name he could think of. 

_Ren was prone to throwing tantrums._  
When Hux heard about it for the first time, he almost laughed because it fit his image of the angry brat so well. But Ren’s rages came quickly and unexpectedly, and they worried - even frightened - some of the Stormtroopers. Respect born out of fear.  
Hux wasn’t sure he liked that.]

With a sigh, the general set down his tablet, rubbing his temples as he stared at the technical drawings he had just finished. His heart’s blood had flowed into projects Starkiller Base and Finalizer, but there was always some room for improvement.  
Sitting in private with blueprints for all kinds of gadgets big and small helped Hux to stay sane. It required silence and order and a neatness he had started to miss every time he stepped outside of his private chambers.  
Regretfully, these days were long and filled to the brim with work which left him less and less time to concentrate on architecture, designing, or really anything else that came close to leisure.

Hux checked the time. In about three hours he was expected back on the bridge. That was more time than he’d had in months. Sleep was no option, despite his fatigue.  
Pulling the tablet close again he opened a new file, for once mindlessly doodling and sketching out some weapon designs he had thought of but didn’t have the time yet to jot down.  
These days he found himself thinking about handguns most of the time. They were quick, easy to handle - especially for a trained general like himself.  
_Quicker than a lightsaber…?_  
At this thought he paused, hesitating to bring the pen down again.  
_No. Too slow._  
At least in a fair battle, a duel.  
Facing a Force-user in battle would end in misery, even with a handgun as sleek and elegant and quick as the one he had just sketched.  
Against a Force-user, he wasn’t any better off than an ordinary stormtrooper.  
He had seen Kylo Ren train against droids that shot blaster fire at him and the brat had deflected each and every one with ease. Eventually he had sliced the training droid in half.

With a tap of his pen he deleted the file with the handgun sketches and opened a new one. Absentmindedly, he started sketching again and soon stared down at a simplified image of the training droid. Hux would have given a lot to see it beat Ren, out of sheer spite.  
Leaning back, the general tapped the pen against his lips, allowing his thoughts to wander. There was no way a droid like this could beat the Force-user. Just like there was no way a normal human being like himself could beat him.  
_I’d need to kill him in his sleep._

[ _It had been a shamelessly short time after meeting each other for the first time that they had ended up in one of the training rooms. Alone. Together._

_Hux had been watching this new, black-clad and knightlike figure, had watched how fluidly he moved, with what grace he wielded his lightsaber. The helmet, the black robes… a mystery.  
He had been skeptical, but he had still watched Ren train and marveled at the way he could almost see the other’s muscles move underneath the blackness, like a living shadow._

_It was impossible to see the other’s face behind that mask, but at that point Hux had been sure it must be a heroic face. One that would glimmer and shine, maybe even blind him.  
Only a creature of grace could move like that, like the big and dangerous cat-like beasts he had encountered on some faraway planet._

_With a beast like that he could do it.  
He could do **everything**._]

Hux’ drawing skills were more or less restricted to architecture and technical drawings, blueprints and the like. Still he found himself doodling Ren’s helmet, then next to it a poor portrait of the man underneath.  
By now he knew exactly what shape the once broken nose had or where all the moles on the other’s face were. He knew how to draw Ren’s lips and the curve of his dark brows. The eyes gave him the most trouble, and the hair. It was always so unkempt, Hux didn’t know how to draw it. It never looked right.  
A knock on his door startled the general and he quickly closed the program while shoving the tablet away as if he had been caught in something illegal.

[ _Maybe it had been Phasma’s fault after all._  
The way she kept the female officers and servants and really any other woman on the ship away from him like a hen guarding her chicks… Hux sometimes suspected the captain tried to save him for herself, in fact not guarding the women but guarding Hux so he would at some point turn towards her in his manly despair.  
But Hux didn’t despair easily and his family story ensured his staying away from coupling with a female even more so. Having grown up as the family’s bastard had this effect on him.

_Why his mind had chosen to mull over this idea while he was watching Kylo Ren train he didn’t know._  
But he did know why he suddenly pulled his handgun from underneath his coat and shot at the black figure.  
The blaster fire was deflected as if it was nothing and Ren hadn’t even glanced his way but continued with the training droid until he lost his patience and sliced it in half. With the smoking remains of the droid at his feet he then turned his head towards Hux who was still holding the blaster gun. His chest was heaving but he didn’t seem exhausted. It was suppressed rage, as Hux later understood.  
The blaster was ripped out of his fingers by the Force and an almost lazy wave of the dark knight’s hand, and clattered to the ground meters away and out of Armitage’s reach.  
Holding his breath, he stood there as Kylo Ren slowly approached him, circled him, gave him the once-over.  
What did he think of him? What did Force-users think of those who were without such powers…?  
It didn’t help at all that Kylo Ren was taller than him. Hux straightened his shoulders, but he didn’t reach Ren’s height. Not even with his command cap on. It was only by mere centimeters, but the Force-user still seemed to tower over him.  
Armitage hated him already despite his earlier admiration. 

_“You disturbed my training session”, the slightly muffled voice behind the mask complained and only after looking Hux over again, added, “general.”_  
Armitage schooled his face into composure and clasped his hands behind his back, mentally checking his own posture. His lips curled into a thin smile then, an almost sneer.  
“As general on this ship it’s my right to supervise even you, Ren. After all, I have to know what you’re capable of… and what you are not.” A light, reddish eyebrow was raised at the broken training droid.  
When Hux moved, he made sure his shoulder brushed against Kylo Ren’s ever so slightly. Stopping in front of the droid Armitage tilted his head, studying the way the lightsaber had cleanly cut through the thing. Those droids weren’t exactly expensive or hard to produce, but that didn’t mean he could let Ren cut them all to pieces each time he felt like being done with training.  
“Don’t they teach you patience and restraint in Jedi school? No? Well, you’ll learn restraint while you’re aboard my sh-”  
Something squeezed his throat, as if somehow his collar had tightened around it.  
Armitage’s hands came up and grasped the black fabric in a state that was close to panic, but…  
Then the feeling of being choked was gone. Just like that.  
He spun around, his once pale face now flushed, teeth bared.  
He knew. He had heard the stories of Vader’s grip of death.  
Had that brat just dared…?  
But Kylo just turned his back to him and was actually leaving the training room, not giving a fuck.  
He just went and left a seething General Hux behind.]

Whoever had chosen to disturb him have better had a good explanation ready, Hux decided when he got up to go to the door. Since these were his private quarters, the door wouldn’t simply open for everyone. And he couldn’t stand other people in his room at all, so all he could do was to actually answer the door himself.  
He quickly checked his reflection in the mirror next to the door, but he had only pulled off his gloves to work on his tablet. That aside Hux still wore his usual uniform, just without the coat and the cap.  
Still, he made a kind of effort to position his bare hands so that the visitor wouldn’t see them when the door opened.  
Straightening his shoulders Hux watched the door slide open soundlessly, his face trained into an expression that already displayed how he felt about the disturbance.  
It turned into a full scowl when he recognized the dark figure looming just outside his quarters.  
What _did_ Kylo Ren want from him at this hour…?

**Author's Note:**

> Gosh darn it, you did it and soldiered through my first fanfic since DECADES.  
> (great, now I sound like an ancient creep, right?)  
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Anyway, a HUGE shoutout to the wonderful HexedSupernova (both on tumblr and twitter!) for beta-reading this thing! Thanks a lot! I'm no native speaker so I'm really grateful for your help!
> 
> There'll be at least one second part to this, as implied by the (1/?) in the title, heh.  
> Hopefully you'll enjoy it! ♥


End file.
